Thursday, 18 May 2017

Failing Health: Osinbajo will Not be Allowed to Replace Buhari in 2019 - Northern Elders Forum

Osinbajo & Buhari

While speaking in an exclusive interview with New Telegraph,
the spokesman of Northern Elders Forum (NEF), Professor Ango Abdullahi,
disclosed that should President Muhammadu Buhari’s failing health
prevents him from seeking re-election in 2019, the North must retain the
presidency.

The elder statesman stressed that the region must be allowed to
field a presidential candidate through the All Progressives Congress
(APC), in 2019 should Buhari fail to seek re-election.

He said in the situation of any eventuality, the Acting President,
Yemi Osinbajo should be allowed to complete the current tenure but will
not be allowed to contest in 2019.

Abdullahi said, “The constitutional provision says that in the
event that the president dies in office or becomes incapacitated for one
reason or the other and cannot perform the duties of his office, he
will be succeeded by the Vice president.

“But no one is in a position to know at what point he is going
to recover fully and come back to office, or whether the unexpected
could happen. The northern elders insist that Osinbajo cannot replace
Buhari in 2019

“If the worst case scenario happens, and Buhari is not back on
seat, the constitution is very clear that the vice president takes over.

“And what we then expect is that he will take that tenure to
its logical end and from there, the politics of power sharing will take
precedence over anything else.

“When the unexpected happens, in 2019 we will be back to our position that the north should be treated equitably and fairly. And we expect that another northern candidate will emerge as presidential candidate on the platform of APC.”

Abdullahi lamented that the north is still marginalized in spite of the fact that Buhari is president. “To
be fair and truly honest, I will say that yes, our expectations have
been far above what we saw on ground. Meaning that what we were
expecting from this government in terms of equity and justice to the
north has not materialized up till now,” he said.

According to him, the North is still being cheated in spite of the fact that one of its own is president.

“For example, if you look at both the 2016 and 2017 budgets, if
you combine capital and recurrent expenditures for both years, the
North took roughly 30 per cent in spite of the fact that everybody knows
that even if it’s by one per cent, the north is more populated than the
South. Even in terms of landmass, the North constitutes 75 per cent of
the landmass of this country,” he pointed out.

The NEF spokesman blamed Buhari for giving key ministries in his administration to southerners “who don’t feel shy of looking after themselves first before the North, even if it’s on second thoughts.”

Abdullahi said that some of the projects that should improve the
living standard in the North have been abandoned even by this
administration.

“Take, for example, the Mambila Power Project, the dredging of
River Niger, the Ajaokuta Steel and so on. Of course, you can also blame
past northern leaders who were in power when these projects were just
brushed aside,” he added.